


Parasite

by telekinesiskid



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Lovesick Pearl, POV Second Person, also includes baby steven, pregnant Rose, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:00:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid/pseuds/telekinesiskid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, she pulls you aside. She tells you she has great news to share.</p><p>She's forgotten the meaning of the word "great".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parasite

**Author's Note:**

> ahhhh how nice it is to be writing fanfics again. We can thank the stevenbomb for that I think.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

You don’t understand why she’s doing this. Why she feels the need to do this. Why she’s doing this to _you,_ but she’s _not_ doing it to you- she’s not even doing it _for_ you. She’s doing it for someone else. A human. An inconsequential little native. Just a blip on her cosmic radar- that isn’t so much a _blip_ anymore as it is… a calamity waiting to happen.

You tell her no. You don’t make that choice yourself; that’s the very first word that passes your lips once she’s told you. You’re still smiling, but she’s no longer smiling. You know you’re not supposed to be smiling. You don’t even _feel_ like you’re smiling- you feel like your face is stuck, clenched, frozen in the exact moment you realised you shouldn’t have trusted her when she told you that she had “great news” to share with you. She hardly ever has great news for you these days.

She stares; she doesn’t speak. She reacts as though she were seeking an entirely different reaction from you. She murmurs a little and looks away, embarrassed perhaps, or just confused. Like she doesn’t know how she can make it any clearer. She’s pregnant. She’s going to have a human child.

She’s going to become one half of a whole.

Something bitter and sharp jolts through you and you stutter the word ‘no’ out again- the word just tearing a raw, angry feeling deep in your heart. Rose looks up at you, alarmed, hurt, and it takes you no small amount of effort to stop saying ‘no’ and to say something with a little more substance to it. You tell her that… it’s preposterous. You laugh and frame it all in such a way that makes it seem ridiculous, absurd. No gem has ever _mated_ with a human before. No gem has ever conceived and given birth like mammalsdo. Bodies are only illusions; they’re not _real._ They don’t _work_ like that.

You use the word ‘undignified’, and she finally breaks her silence to tell you that it’s _not._ It’s a beautiful thing. It’s the manifestation of her love for Greg. Greg’s love for her. Their love for each oth-

“It’s disgusting,” you tell her.

You try to talk her out of it. You tell her to sit down and – she’s too nice, too sweet – she sits down and goes quiet and lets you rattle off all the reasons why it would be such a terrible if not _completely_ disastrous idea. You pace in front of her, back and forth, as your mind fills and overflows with reasons _not_ to go through with it: it’s dangerous, it’s uncharted territory, the crystal gems need her, what if Homeworld gems return, how will you and Garnet and Amethyst cope on missions without her shield, you all need her, she’d be confined to her gem for _decades,_ you need her, Greg and the human child won’t live to see the next century anyway, you need her, so what’s the _point_ of it, you need her, doesn’t she love her crystal gems, you need her, doesn’t she love you, you _need her…_

You stop pacing and double over, breathing slow and deep. Tears have come to your eyes, you can feel them, but you brush them away with one hand while you work hard to reclaim your composure. You look to her, expectant – in the opposite way that she is – hoping that you somehow changed her mind. But she only has a small apology for you.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I want to be a mother. I’m going to be one.” Then she stands and leaves for her room, head down.

She ignores your attempts to call her back and talk to her some more.

 

You can’t get through to Rose. But you must. You have to.

So you try to get through to her via other channels.

You hear his ‘music’ on your way from the warp pad to your room one day. _Mr Universe,_ out on the beach, plucking at one of those stringed wooden instruments Rose seems to love so much. You stand at the mouth of the cave and look out onto what you suppose the humans would call a sunny afternoon. You spot Greg sitting along the shoreline and thank your lucky stars that he’s not _singing_ – or crooning, more like – and he can hear you call out his name.

His fingers still on his guitar and he looks over his shoulder quizzically. He pushes his sunglasses up over his hairline just to check it’s _you_ he’s looking at, and he gives you an awkward little wave.

You understand why he would react such a way. The last time you hailed him, or even really acknowledged him, was to demand that he act like the civilised human being he clearly thought he was and to put some shoes on. You tell the others (not Rose) that Greg is all the evidence you need to prove the human race has already hit its peak and has now begun _un-_ evolving. He looks more and more like a _caveman,_ the older and scragglier he gets. You avoid him when you can; normally you don’t make a habit of putting him in your line of sight. Not even if Rose is with him, as she so often is.

But you’ve found yourself in a position where you need him. So you have to act kind.

He rubs at his neck under his thick wad of hair and makes like he’s going to turn back to the ocean again and play, so you call out his name again. When he looks back to you, you make big waving motions at him to come up and he seems to understand. He gets up, slings his guitar over his back, and jogs up to the cave.

By the time he arrives, he’s sweaty and gasping like a dying thing, and you take a few obvious steps back from him. He huffs and laughs and informs you (though you never asked) that he’s not in such good shape anymore, and you wonder to yourself how he thought he was _ever_ in good shape. You’ve known him since he was just nineteen and twenty years on hasn’t so much _ruined_ his figure as it has made it a whole lot worse.

You try to stop being so viscerally disgusted by him, because that never gets you anywhere. You wait for him to stop blathering at you, but he doesn’t, so you cut him off and cut right to the chase. You tell him to make Rose change her mind because she has apparently lost hers. You tell him that it’s not _natural,_ what she’s proposing she do, and it’s not good for her. It’s not good for anyone. The crystal gems need her, and – you try appealing to him – _he_ surely needs her too, in a physical form that can be interacted with and _seen_ every day.

You pause for a moment, to let him get a word in. He looks unsure. Hesitant. But it’s more than what Rose ever gave you, and you’re fairly sure you can work with that. He rakes a hand through his dirty windswept hair and makes those low, uncertain grunting noises that irritate you so much. He doesn’t look you in the eye as he tells you, in the most pathetic way possible, that he’s not so sure if he can do that. It’s Rose’s decision. He supports her 100% in whatever she wants to do.

No. You don’t like that. You don’t like how he is- how much of a pushover he is. How he never stands up for himself. How he would much rather do the _easy_ thing than the _right_ thing. You don’t like it at all. You think he’s a good-for-nothing, gross, oversensitive _idiot_. You barely bite back as much as you seize him by the front of his shirt and hiss into his face the stone-cold truth that his tiny basic brain probably has yet to comprehend: he _will never see her again._ Rose will be _gone._ She’ll be trapped in her gem, trapped in a human, until that human grotesquely proofs out of existence one day. And until then _there will be no Rose._

You’re breathing a little too hard. You notice that he has his hands raised, up where you can see them, like innocents do when they want to show their armed authority figures just how harmless and peaceful they are. He’s shaking. You catch a look in his eye like he’s scared, but… he also looks _sorry_ for you, in a way that makes you want to hurl him all the way back out onto the shoreline. You don’t want to risk it- Rose would _hate_ you. You begin to unfurl your grip from his shirt. Your hand hurts. But the pain there pales in comparison to the pain you feel in your chest, when you breathe, when you think about her. When you think about your life without her.

You turn your back on him and don’t move. You tell him in a slow, even tone to talk to her for you, and he promises in a nervous warble that he will, he will talk to her for you. He’ll… He’ll see what he can do.

You breathe out and don’t do anything else. He lingers for a minute, like he expects you to do something else. But after a while he stammers out something about a two for one hot dog special down at the pier, and you hear the echoed scrap of his sandals as he flees.

You wonder if you were a little too harsh.

Then you think to yourself that you could’ve been a _lot_ harsher and he should be lucky.

 

You pick fights with the gems when they warp back to base and you corner them. You challenge them. You question their loyalty, their love, and in turn they question yours.

You hate the way Garnet talks to you. The way she warns you to calm down like she thinks you’re not- you _are_ calm, you don’t know what she’s talking about- she can’t see out her big stupid glasses. She tells you that you’re blowing it well out of proportion, that Rose will be back with you all before you even know it, but you couldn’t disagree more. You feel Rose’s absence like a lump in your throat after a couple of days. You say ‘a couple of days’ only because suddenly you’re embarrassed to admit that it takes much less time away from Rose than that to make you anxious. To make you miss her like you’ve missed nothing else before, not even Homeworld.

You don’t know how you’re supposed to go without her for much longer than that. You’ve never been without her. You’ve _always_ been there, by her side, at her flank, one way or another. You’ve always…

Amethyst laughs at you, and you hate that. You hate it so much. You know that Amethyst would be almost as lost without Rose as you, and you shout at her- you tell her that Rose _won’t_ _be there_ anymore to clean up after her messes, to make her feel like she did nothing wrong after _another_ mission went bust due to her reckless actions. Rose won’t be there anymore to babyher. She’ll have to _GROW UP._

Garnet takes a step forward and yells at you to cut it out. You can’t quite see – your eyes are tearing up – but you’re sure Amethyst has dashed behind her. Garnet really lets you have it after that; she lets you know just how _selfish_ you’re being, how _disrespectful._ She jabs you in the shoulder – it’s a sharp pain you spitefully welcome – and tells you all the things you shouldn’t need telling: Rose can do whatever she wants. If becoming a mother is something she wants to pursue then who are _you,_ or _any_ of you, to stand in the way of that. Why can’t you just be happy for her?

You act like none of them truly understand, like they’re all so _senseless._ You cry out that Rose isn’t going to be a _mother-_ she’s going to be _gone._ She’s going to _die-_ and for what? Just another human. She’s not supposed to be _pregnant,_ and Greg is _all_ to blame for that-

Garnet forms a gauntlet and smashes it against the wall. The room tremors for just a second but it’s enough to shut you up, which you think might’ve been her intention once you notice her clenched teeth. You’re opening your mouth to tell her to be _careful_ when she cuts you off-

“You _need_ to stop acting like this,” she shouts at you. _“When_ will you understand that Rose is with _Greg_ \- not _you!”_

“He’s a _human,”_ you shout back. Like you can’t think of anything more embarrassing to be. “He’ll be _dead_ soon, and so will any human she creates, so what’s the _point?”_

Rose names both of you and you startle.You spin your head around to see Rose standing at the entrance to the cave, eyes slit, lips pursed. Behind her Greg watches on; fear and worry and remorse and all other manner of _ugly_ emotions mix on his face. The gauntlet on Garnet’s right hand disappears and she stands there, like she’s just as much a guilty party in this as you are, but no one is looking at her. They’re all looking at you. Amethyst’s eyes and nose are running and she’s giving you such an accusatory glare, like you deserve everything coming to you.

You don’t want to know what’s coming to you. You know Rose heard you; you were practically _screaming._ You’re green in the face from shouting, trying to convince everyone how _wrong_ she is. How worthless Greg is. You can see from _here_ just how resentful- how… _disappointed…_

Your hand flies to your mouth as you choke on a sob. You run for the warp pad and get yourself out of there.

 

It’s evening.

You find yourself on the shores of Mask Island. It’s not a place you particularly desired to be; it was just where you ended up in your haste to put as much distance between you and everyone else as possible. You sit huddled on the sand, your knees to your chest, your chin on your arms. You stare into the horizon and the half-moon slowly rising up out of the ocean.

You don’t do anything. You just sit there with heavy heart and think about Rose and how much you’d miss her.

You can’t think about anything else.

You hear someone use the warp pad inland but you don’t react. You don’t know who it is rustling through the trees and padding along the sand until Rose sits down beside you.

You peek up at her a little. You don’t see a trace of emotion in her face. She’s not smiling, which leads you to think that she’s mad with you. She’s here to chastise you. To tell you, like Garnet did, that you’ve been terrible.

But after a few minutes of silence – nothing but the to and fro crash of the waves – she still hasn’t said anything. She hasn’t even moved. It makes you uneasy. But she reads you so well, like an open book, and she breaks her silence with a slow sigh.

“Pearl,” she starts. “Garnet’s right.”

The words are like several blades to your chest. You feel like you can’t breathe- even though you know you’re perfectly fine.

But you’re not fine.

“You know how I feel about Greg,” she continues, soft and gentle and not at all mad like you expected. But it’s not any better. “I’ve been with him for twenty years now. I _love_ him, with every fibre of my being. He’s not like the others. He’s not just another human. He’s special and _so_ very dear to me.”

“And I’m not dear to you?” you question, turning your tear-filled expression to her.

She looks briefly distressed. “Of _course_ you are. You’re _very_ dear to me. You and Garnet and Amethyst… I love you all. But…” She looks away. “I love Greg in, different ways. I want to do this with him. I want to have a child.”

You sit up on your knees, turning your body towards her. “But you won’t even get to _see_ your child,” you plead with her. “You’ll just… be stuck in your _gem_ while they take possession of it. That’s not _mother_ hood _._ ”

She chuckles a little. “Human technology is amazing. Humans can document almost every second of their lives and immortalise that moment in time. And besides, I _will_ get to see my child, even if they don’t get to see me. I’ll be an important part of them.”

“But… Rose, I…” You feel tears spill down your face but you don’t hide them this time; you don’t wipe them away. You want her to seethem. You want her to see how much you _ache._ “I’d miss you… I-I’d… Rose, I _love_ you, please… please don’t-“

“Pearl.” Rose lays a hand on your shoulder and you’re quick to take it between the two of yours. She’s so soft and so warm, even on a cool night like this. “…If you really loved me, then you’d let me do this. You’d respect my decision. You’d respect _Greg,_ and you’d… you’d understand that, the kind of relationship you want with me is just not possible. _”_

She very gently, deliberately pulls her hand away from yours.

It’s not the first time she’s politely rejected you and you’re suddenly embarrassed that she’s had to do it again. That she’s had to do it several times before.

You pull yourself back into a ball and hide your face. You hide your shame.

You feel so small.

“…Greg is going to raise them, of course,” Rose murmurs. “But I’ve asked Garnet and Amethyst if they would take our child when they were a bit older. Take them on missions and teach them how to use their gem powers. Teach them how to be a crystal gem. I’d like you all to be there for them when I can’t be, physically.”

You don’t know what to say, so you don’t say anything. You just clutch your arms tighter.

“…Would you do that too, Pearl?” she asks in a small voice. Your heart cuts right in two to hear that she’s pleading. “For me?”

You don’t know. You used to think there was nothing you wouldn’t do for Rose. You joined her army and rebelled against Homeworld. You followed her into battle. You recklessly threw yourself between her and every manner of weaponry more times than you could count. You put yourself through immeasurable amounts of pain just so that no one would ever do the same to her- so that no one would ever harm your leader. Your inspiration. Your reason for being. You’ve spent over 6000 years with her and you could happily spend another 6000 with her.

Sometimes you think that if Rose died, you would go with her.

Now it’s as if that conviction is being put to the test.

You’ve taken far too long to answer her. Rose doubts you even have an answer for her. She finally lets out a low sigh as she rises to her feet. She informs you, “I’m going to do this. You don’t have to support my human family, or even respect me for my decision, but it won’t stop me from doing this.”

You breathe out like it hurts. “But _I’m_ your family,” you insist. Your throat feels raw- too much emotion trying to claw its way out. “We’re the crystal _gems,_ we’re… _we’re_ your family.”

“Oh Pearl…” She puts a large hand on your head but she seems to give pause before she can do much else. She slowly retracts her hand, as if she now realises what a bad idea that might be. “You and the gems _are_ my family, and you always will be. But Greg is a part of my family too now. And my child, when their born.”

Your body is wracked with silent sobs. You wish you could tell her to stop reminding you.

“You’re all my family,” Rose finishes, and you’re sure that she’s crying too now because she sounds croaky, choked up. All you can do is torture yourself; you think- _you_ made her cry. You don’t deserve her.

Greg never makes her cry. He always makes her laugh and smile. He puts stars in her eyes.

You can’t even remember the last time you put stars in her eyes.

Her soft footfalls in the sand grow faint as she leaves you, until you hear the distant hum of the warp pad. And then you’re alone.

You stay on the beach late into the night. No one else comes for you. No one tries to console you. The waves roll in closer and closer until they’re cold, lapping at your feet. A part of you begs for the ocean to just take you, to swallow you whole.

 

When you come home, Rose is nowhere near the temple, and neither is Greg. Amethyst skitters away from you – much like a rodent, you note with disdain – but Garnet catches you. She takes the time to apologise for earlier, and you cross your arms and reluctantly apologise too.

You try to slip past her to your room, because it’s clear she wants to talk and you don’t want to. You already know what she’s going to say. Still, she forces you to stay and proceeds to tell you what she has told you time and time again- all of the things that, apparently, Rose is too polite to tell you herself: you need to move _on._ You need to let Rose go. You make her feel guilty for the romantic feelings she can’t return. You even make _Greg_ feelguilty- it’s no secret even to him that there’s a lot more to your hatred of him, other than just his being a human with bad hair and a short lifespan.

You know. You’ve heard it all before.

You sigh wearily and push past Garnet to get to your room. You don’t need this now.

Thankfully Garnet lets you go.

 

The next few months pass like a slow if mild form of torture. You don’t talk much, to anyone. Not even to Rose. You don’t feel real. A lot of the time you feel like you’re just sort of _there_ , bound by obligation. Like you’re there to appear in the family portrait, to fill a quota, to be in the backdrop whilst everyone else chitters away about baby this and baby that.

You don’t voice your own thoughts (of course not) but you’ve had the displeasure to actually _see_ a human baby once. It was absolutely revolting. It smelled bad, it was loud, it was messy, it was uncoordinated, it was unintelligible- it was every quality you hated in humans compacted into one, exaggerated all at once. And you still don’t understand how something like that could ever be mistaken for _cute_. You suppose it was a cheap evolutionary tactic, to ensure human mothers wouldn’t abandon their young. Or eat them.

You can’t understand why Rose would ever give up her life for a little beast like that.

For the most part, you avoid the baby craze. But the one thing you can’t avoid is watching Rose’s stomach grow bigger and bigger. It’s subtle, but you do take a proper look every once in a while and really notice it. How her gem bloats out with her. It’s so completely _alien_ and scary to you, and yet Rose seems to relish every moment of it. You always spot her glowing and smiling and encouraging someone, anyone, to put their ear or their hand up to her stomach.

Sometimes, when she’s alone, she even coos and talks to the parasite. She tells it she loves it.

She even names it.

 

One day she looks close to bursting point, ready to pop. From afar you watch Greg do his best to wrap his arms around her as she waddles out of the temple. It starts to rain as they leave and she chuckles between stressed pants as Greg strips off his jacket and tries to put it over her shoulders.

You wait and you wait and you wait and you wait, but Rose never comes back.

You cry for a full day when it finally hits you that that was the last time you ever saw her.

 

You don’t come out of your room for several weeks. The gems are sympathetic, at first. They’re quiet themselves. You’re not even sure if Amethyst is in the temple half the time. But after a while they start to bother you; they come to check in on you. They bang on your door and crawl up through your silky lakes. They hound you about needing more hands on missions, and yell unhelpful things at you. You should’ve spent more time with her while she was still around instead of holding your stupid grudge. You’re not the _only_ one who misses her. You haven’t even _met_ Steven yet.

Steven. That’s right, it’s Steven now. Not Rose. Rose is gone, and Steven is…

You still spend a lot of your days just crying.

 

A couple of years later and you almost feel like a fully functioning gem again. At some stage Garnet appointed herself the new leader, which you had initially resented, although you realise now how fair that is, given that she carried out a lot of missions alone for a time. But you participate in missions now. You even spend up to a couple of hours outside your room, talking to Garnet and Amethyst, just sharing memories, remembering the good old days. You like your talks, because it always leaves a warm, bittersweet kind of swell, deep inside you, that isn’t so unbearably painful that you have to shut it out and shut yourself away from it. You welcome it.

Amethyst tells you and Garnet about her eventful day between mouthfuls of something greasy and almost definitely unfit for gem consumption. She went to see Greg. She went to see Steven. You experience an intensely slow and unnerving feeling, like you’re falling, sinking, all the way to the crust of the earth, but you stay and listen. You don’t suddenly leave as you’re prone to do whenever any of the Universes come up in discussion. You let Amethyst tell you things about Steven you didn’t even know were impressive for two year-olds: he walks now, he can string words together, he asks “why” too much. He laughs and smiles a lot. He’s a sweet boy.

Amethyst asks if you want to see a picture of him. You don’t know what to say. You awkwardly start to decline when Amethyst whips out the photo and holds it under your nose. You pull it back a little to see Greg, smiling like a proud human father. And the boy in his arms, Steven…

He has her gem. He has _Rose._

You tear up before you can shakily hand back the photo, and you’re forced to listen to Amethyst blunder through a hasty, defensive apology, but Garnet comforts you. She pats your back.

“You should meet Steven,” she says. “He’s a beautiful little boy. And Greg’s a great father. You know we’d all like it if you’d see him.” Her voice softens. “Rose would like it. If she could see you.”

You stare at Garnet, surprised. You blink the tears out of your eyes. “You know that?”

Garnet smiles. “I’m sure of it.”

You tell her you’ll think about it.

 

You wait for a fine day, arbitrarily. The weather honestly has no bearing on how mentally prepared you are to meet the son of Rose, the embodiment of her love for human life. But you wait for a blue sky anyway, before you let Garnet and Amethyst take you into Beach City.

You don’t know why you’re at the local car wash until you spot Greg’s old van. You’re surprised he still has it. You think any sensible human would’ve surely traded it in by now for something more practical and a little less… gimmicky. But, as you approach it, you admit that he keeps it in rather good condition.

You peer through a window only to find that the interior is a mess.

Amethyst rocks the van a little as she excitedly yells for someone to come out. One of the doors slowly opens to reveal the tiniest human boy you’ve ever seen. He throws out his arms at the sight of Amethyst and grins and yells, “Ame!”

You stare, confused and alarmed, as Amethyst rushes forward to grab the toddler and lift him up into the air. She swings him around, the two of them laughing, although you’re not sure it looks very fun or even _safe,_ but you don’t know from these things so you continue to stand there, taking it all in, tentative to respond. Eventually Garnet stops Amethyst mid-spin and directs them both over to you. They set the boy on the ground between them, keeping his hands in theirs, and he gazes up at you with wide dark eyes.

Garnet smiles. She points as she introduces you both. “Steven, meet Pearl. Pearl, this is Steven.”

You don’t know what to do, how to react. Your eyes flicker before you hesitantly lean down to offer the boy a smile that’s probably too nervous to be read positively. You put on a cheerful tone that you hope doesn’t feel too fake. “H-Hello Steven,” you greet, raising a hand to wave. “Aheh… you look… um. Cute.” You smile to the point where it hurts. You’re trying.

He doesn’t speak. He just keeps on staring, unnerving you…

Then, all of a sudden, he breaks into a grin. “You’re pretty!” he exclaims, pointing right at you.

You feel your face start to heat up. Amethyst bursts into a series of unflattering laughs. “O-Oh,” you murmur. “That’s… nice of you to say, Steven…”

You feel so awkward. So out of place. Even Garnet starts chuckling at you.

“What,” you ask, burning brighter.

Garnet shakes her head. “You see? He’s not so bad after all now is he?”

You sigh. You watch as Steven wriggles free of his restraints and toddles over to his father, squealing, as he comes out of the garage. Greg quickly grabs a hose and starts dowsing his son in what appears to be just plain cold water. He asks Steven who let him out of the van and looks over to see the three of you. He waves and casually greets Amethyst, Garnet, and he even says hello to _you_ after a stunned pause to see you there. You call out hello to him too, and he actually _smiles_ at you. It kind of makes you want to smile too.

Even though you’ve never been on good terms, you can imagine he spent no small amount of time crying over her too.

You stare at Steven as he runs around and around his father until he trips and stumbles. He takes the fall like he does it every day and he barely flinches. He does it again five seconds later. He puts a pink graze on his knee but he doesn’t stop trying to have fun.

A part of you wants to rush over and help him up and ask him if he’s OK. You don’t know if it’s because you may actually care about his wellbeing, or if you’re scared he’ll damage her gem.

You tell yourself that it will all be fine. You can cope. You can wait this out.

Humans only live for so long.


End file.
